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This year had defense, just not robot to robot, at least not most of the time. There was the occasional snag on a can that could tie down two robots for 30 seconds or more and to those who say there was NO robot to robot action, I point to Final 2 of the Hopper division (don't worry, its on youtube). Going into this year I thought it would be boring, and for a spectator who was not well versed on the rules and objectives, it probably was, however as an involved member of the team, I was not bored for a second, and as programmer, this year has offered the opportunity for my most advanced and longest auto routine. I think equally of both types of game having now played both. That being said, I do have one complaint about games with no intended robot to robot action. Teams who do not have the background to build a good superstructure are left out in the cold with no place to go. I saw one team this year with no way to lift totes and honestly, because of driver practice, they got more totes scored than some teams who tried, but failed to build an effective manipulator. This, near forcing teams to build some superstructure also created some interesting designs, for example, I saw one team who used a garden rake head with some teeth cut off to lift totes and it was one of the most stable one sided lifts on the field. Strategy wise, this game was not as fun because the other side could not do much to mess with your strategy, most matches you had a reasonable idea of how many cans they could grab, if any, and how well they could throw noodles and could easily plan for these. In previous years teams could do things unexpectedly to mess with your alliance strategy, for example at last year's SCRIW, our alliance had one robot that was just a kit base that when we asked if they were ready to go on the field they replied, "do you have a screw driver?" They came out to play in our final match and all three of the other alliance's robots were working against that one base to try and score the ball leaving us and our other partner free to score as much as we wanted. To clarify, SCRIW elims were played like champs with 4 robots per alliance, so we did have 3 robots on the field every match. This unexpected defensive domination is not possible this year with this style game play. In answer to cries of robustness or lack thereof, if your base has trouble being robust enough to take full power hits, then you should use the kit base. Our 2014 bot has survived not only a cross the field hit, but also a 3ish foot tall drop off our cart while driving down the road and has some suspiciously yellow powder coat paint chips on it, sorry Flash. It is built primarily of the kit base and 80 20 extrusion and we continue to abuse it at numerous local demonstrations. It has been one of our lowest cost robots and IMO one of our best. This year though, because of the game and the humps in the field, I saw some robot damage of their own doing from tip overs and yes, can wars. So as this thread indicates, there are pros and cons of each and personally I think that each can produce a very fun and challenging game. That being said, because we are good at building robust robots and I enjoy seeing the sudden twists that come with the buzzer beating 360 no-scope shots, I would like to see the bumper rules return.